The Paradox Parable of the Called Leader

Once upon a time right around now, in an organization not far from here, sits Hero, the leader of the whole thing. She is not having a very good day, although both the quantitative and qualitative metrics upon which her performance are measured look good. No, let's not fool ourselves, the numbers are actually great. Hero is in her element. She loves her role and she is really good at it. She has found her niche in life. Some of the articles she read recently in Scholarly Organization Journal would say Hero has found her calling. 

By all accounts, Hero should be having a very good day. Indeed this should be a very, very good day. 

She has a late meeting with an influential member of the board of directors, Distance. Distance oversees the selection, compensation, and retention of the executive team. The relationship Hero has with Distance is a good one, even though Hero has never felt like the relationship was that close. In fact, Hero has only ever met with Distance in board meetings and on executive retreats. She was really looking forward to finally meeting one-on-one with Distance and aligning goals for the upcoming year.

Yes, it really, really should have been a good day. 

Hero, even started her morning with 15 minutes of quiet reflection using her favorite bible verse as the focus of her morning contemplation. She turned in her bible to Proverbs 3:5-6 which reads “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.”  Because of the complexity of her organization, Hero often finds herself turning to her spiritual connections for wisdom in decision-making.  Since she often feels the magnitude of hundreds of people whose lives are impacted by her decisions, connecting with her spiritual nature helps her to realize that she is not the center of the universe. Hero remembers attending a conference where she heard a speaker* say, "Humility is like a sock with a hole in it, it's realizing what is not there that really matters."

As Hero sat in quiet contemplation what really jumped out at her in this morning's reading was the instruction not to lean on her own understanding. This was quite a puzzling paradox. The instruction seems to say that Hero should not put her trust in or be supported by the structures of all that she had learned over the course of her 50 some odd years on earth. 

As Hero focused her attention on these words “lean not on your own understanding” her mind started to drift….

          I have always felt my business and my life are solid. My marriage of 30 years to Loveofmylife is rock solid. As for the workplace, I  have been complemented by Boardchair that I show excellent critical thinking and a strong ability to discern between very viable, but distinctly different options when a decision is needed.  My experiences have been formed from a very good academic pedigree that lead to an excellent job right out of school. Each opportunity I have been given in life seemed to build perfectly as a jumping off point for my next career opportunity.  I really can’t believe it, here I sit three years into this leadership role really trying to fully appreciate what I have accomplished…no that's not right, why do I always do that? It is what the team has accomplished. If it wasn’t for their hard work and dedication to the mission we would be nowhere. 

As she sat and stared at her journal where she keeps these reflective thoughts she got an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and appreciation for who she is and what she has been able to accomplish.

Then Hero remembered the words of her Coach who told her that when journaling, if her mind wanders, she should come back to the thought she was reflecting on, Lean not on your own understanding.  She even remembered proper meditation technique. A good day, are you kidding? 

Yes, this really should have been one of those.

Now time doesn’t allow us to tell you in any detail about the excellent workout that Hero had that morning, nor the healthy breakfast she enjoyed (perfectly balanced between carbs and proteins). We just really don’t have the space to discuss her commute to work where it seemed like she was the only person on the road, and not one car pulled in front of her to cut her off. Not one. When does that ever happen?

We wish there was time to tell you about all the productive meetings Hero had that day, the 20-minute nap she enjoyed in the afternoon, and the very productive afternoon session she had with her Coach. Time and space just don’t allow. Sorry. But all that aside...

Really and truly this should have been a perfect game of a day.

Oh yeah, Hero got in a 45 minute Hot Yoga class before her meeting with Distance. 

Good Day? Ha. 

And yet, to quote from one of Hero's favorite childhood books,

 “This is an awful, no good, very bad day.” 

You see, Hero had her late meeting with Distance, who told Hero her services were no longer needed by the organization. The board wanted to go a different direction. Sure there was certainly acknowledgment of all her positive results. Distance thanked her for all her effort. But in the end, the board decided they needed a new focus and direction (it is highly recommended, that if this was a real organization, who had a real board who made decisions like this, and who issued real stock; that you sell as fast as you can.)

Distance said the announcement would be made in 2 weeks and that they would like to throw a party for Hero. Yes, you read that right, the board fired Hero and wanted to celebrate it.  "Who does that? “Hero asked her Coach when she called to provide the update on her meeting with Distance, 

Indeed, this was not a good day. 

"But one day does not a life make. Nor does what happens on any single day ever define us. It can have an impact for sure, but is in no way a full picture of who we are". —Coach

Now if Coaches are good at one thing, they are good at asking the right question at the right time. They are not very good at providing quotes to be used in a blog post.

Hero’s Coach sat with her in silence as Hero contemplated this day that should have been so good and yet felt not that way at all.

“It's not if something bad might happen in your life but when." Those are the words Hero spoke that broke the silence that enveloped the coaching session (they are also words that will end up some day in a blog post, quoted by Coach.) “The real question to be answered is, How am I going to respond?”  Coach knew what Hero was saying, that leaders are often defined by their resilience in the face of setbacks. Having a positive optimistic long term outlook is what trust is all about.

And now you know why she is my Hero.

*This quote is from Dr. Jay Wood, author of Virtue Epistemology, taken from a lecture at Indiana Wesleyan University. Hero hopes she heard this as the speaker intended.

5 Tips Based on 15 Years of Working from Home

We are all entering some very interesting times as knowledge workers. The Coronavirus pandemic is causing many of us to rethink assumptions we never thought we would have to consider.  As a result, many of you who have maybe worked a day or two from home now and then might find yourself working from home for the next several weeks.

This is especially true as schools decide to move to online formats and are requiring students to stay home, forcing many workers into new scenarios that they have never faced before when it comes to working remotely.

There is some good news in this. A Harvard study in 2019 stated that people who can work from when they choose were 4.4% more productive than those who had fixed, rigid work requirements.  I actually was a bit shocked and thought this might be higher, but my fear is that not everyone who does choose where they work from follows the same discipline they would in an office environment. 

So, I thought I would give some of my thoughts on how I have navigated these “free to choose your workspace” waters for myself (although for some this may be a forced free choice).  

These are not based on any research. I will typically spend several hours researching and crafting a blog post, but this post is different. It is just my opinion.  What I write may not fit you or your style, and that’s okay.

1. Guard Your Attitude Against Loneliness.  I am starting with attitude because many of you really enjoy the social aspect of work.  If you had a question about something you were used to popping your head in someone’s office to get an answer  When you are working from home, the feeling of loneliness can be very real.  I like to intentionally schedule meetings early in the morning and in the late afternoon that have a “check in” social component to them.  I always have a cup of coffee (you substitute your social non-alcoholic beverage of choice) in the morning and my seltzer water (love that fizz) in the afternoon. There is something that just feels social for me about sharing a beverage with someone while we are talking.  I also try, if at all possible, to do these calls over video chat.  I just love Zoom, it is so easy to use and within 30 seconds I can schedule the meeting, put it on my calendar, and send the invite to someone.  

2. Carve Out Dedicated Work Space. I realize this work from home scenario many are facing may not have given you time to put together a complete dedicated office with a door and a desk and comfy leather chair. You really don’t need all of that, anyway, but you do need a place that is going to be your designated work space. It is important that you dedicate that space and that it is not in front of the TV while Fox News broadcasts all the latest scare news. Having a dedicated space will tell your brain this is now where you work. If you can avoid it, try not to make the kitchen table your office, because this is likely grand central station in your house, if it is at all like mine, and it is really hard to have meetings and concentrate with a lot of traffic. 

3. Keep Your Routine. If you are used to being at the office by 7:30am, continue to get up at the same time. If you shower in the morning, then by all means continue this habit. Get dressed like you are going to work and be at your desk by 7:30am, ready to engage.  What you may find is that when you don’t have the 15 or 30 or 60 or 90 minute commute, you can put that time to good use and start that book you have always wanted to get to but just never had the time.  If you eat lunch, take a lunch break. You can still schedule lunch meetings if you want, just warm up your soup or make your sandwich and do the meeting over video conference.  One thing I find about working from home is that I have to get up and take more frequent stretches and walks.  I try and keep them around 5 or 10 minutes, but I try and get up at least every 60 to 90 minutes and stretch.  Then, end your day when you would typically leave your office.  Pick up your book and do another chapter to account for your commute.  When you are finished working, then close your device and be finished.  WARNING: Working from home is not a time to sort of work while you clean the shower that has not been cleaned in a while. Your organization is still expecting full work productivity. Don’t fall into the trap of half-working half-whatever else needs done. 

4. Communicate Expectations.  Most people who you work with will understand that everyone is in a new normal. Your family and friends may not. They may see this as, well, mom and dad are home, so it must be like the weekend.  I have found it really important to communicate with my wife that when I am working, it is like I am not here. Now, if there is an emergency, then by all means come get me. But this should be more rare than a total eclipse of the sun. If you clearly establish boundaries I think you will find you will be just as, if not more, productive. Running out of Mac and Cheese or toilet paper has to wait until you would normally get home to resolve the issue.  I have found that a kind word like, “Is this an emergency or can it wait until I am finished working” works well for me and helps establish appropriate boundaries.  

5. Pay Attention to Habits. You are in an interesting space of getting to form some new habits. For this, I think we do turn to the research. Wendy Wood, in her book Good Habits/Bad Habits, reviewed 64 studies and found that for some behaviors, people’s actions aligned with their intentions. For example, if they intended to get a flu shot or enroll in a class, they did as they intended. The stronger the plan for these one off type things the more likely they were to do them. But for other behaviors and actions that are repeated more often, intentions didn’t matter that much. Things like taking a bus or recycling, for example. People might want to recycle, but turns out that intention doesn’t matter that much. Persistence and the formation of habit have little to do with will power or the mere desire to accomplish.  What is needed is repetition of the desired behavior. So, as you think about working from home, put all your good intentions aside and practice what it is that you want your behavior to be.

I hope you found this interesting to think through as we all navigate these most difficult of days.   If you know someone who is going to be working from home why not forward this post to them and encourage them to sign up for the blog?

 If you have ideas on how to be successful working from home, please send me a note with your thoughts. I promise to give you credit for your idea if I do a “reader’s hacks” type post in the future.

Best Hopes,

Scott

The Battle Rages Between Impulse Control and Rationalization

So I am flying home from Chattanooga last night after working with one of my favorite clients. It was a good day of coaching, working with this firm to help grow their leaders for the next level of leadership.

I got to the airport around 5:15 for my 6:08 flight to Charlotte, then home to Orlando, arriving around 10:45pm.  Everything was on time and I was really relaxed and feeling great. A little hungry, but since I had about 90 minutes in Charlotte (CLT), my plan was to stop and grab a salad in the terminal. I have really been focused on staying healthy since Christmas and the diet and exercise plan really seemed to be working for me.  As I was reflecting on this plan, I received an alert over my phone…

Delayed flight to CLT now departing at 6:35pm.  No problem, still time to grab a salad and make it to my gate on time.

About 10 minutes later, another alert: Delayed flight to CLT now departing at 7:04pm. My timeline for having a relaxing salad in CLT was shrinking as I was down to about 40 minutes to connect to my Orlando flight. 

I can still do it. I might have to grab the salad and eat on the plane but this night would not be the first when I would have to do that.  

It was interesting, I could feel the tension mounting and the stress increasing as my timeline slowly slipped away. About 10 minutes later a flash came across my phone:

Delayed flight to CLT now departing at 7:25pm.

Well, I just missed my flight to Orlando. I knew there was another flight after mine and I have pretty good status on the airline I was flying so I was sure they would rebook me. 

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself at the time. It is funny how  I had gone from this happy, self-actualized human being to anxious and self-centered in under an hour. Just because a circumstance that I could not control had changed.

So, realizing that I was not going to get my salad in CLT, I walked over to the little cafe in the Chattanooga airport, pulled myself up to the bar and asked for a menu. Here is the conversation that ensued:

Bartender: “Want anything to drink?”

Me: “No, I am really trying to limit my alcohol, especially during the week…”

Long pause

Me: “but since my flight is delayed, I will have a beer.”

Bartender: “16 or 22 ounce?”

Me: “16…No, make it a 22, what the heck! Who knows how long I will be here.”

Bartender: “Sounds good, now what do you want to eat?”

Me: “I will have the Chicken Club with Extra Bacon”

Bartender: “You want a side with that? You can have a salad, fruit, or kettle chips.”

Do I really have to tell you what I said in response to his question?

What Happened

As I was reflecting on what happened during that very short amount of time it really hit me: My emotions got the best of me.

I started feeling really sorry for myself. I was feeling lonely and anxious and disappointed all at the same time. Lonely because I was going to miss seeing my wife who would be long asleep by the time I got home. Anxious because I was not confident my flight was actually going to leave Chattanooga at all that night. Disappointed because I had intended to make a great, healthy choice for dinner.

Then, while sitting at the bar, as these emotions took their effect on me, I lost my Impulse Control. 

Oscar Wilde wrote in Lady Windermere’s Fan, “I can resist everything except temptation.”

Impulse Control is an ability to delay or resist an impulse or temptation to act. It entails avoiding rash behaviors and being compromised in decision making. People who display Impulse Control are self-aware when they are frustrated, lonely, anxious, or disappointed. Those with Impulse Control can delay gratification and are not slave to the emotions that stimulate poor decisions.

Grace is realizing that humans make mistakes, forgiving themselves, and getting back to the habits they know are in their best interest.

Of course, I had the kettle chips for my side. 

The next night, Kim fixed a very healthy salmon salad for us and all is again well with the world. 

My Take-A-Way

Even though I coach and teach emotional intelligence, I still have these moments, especially when I am feeling lonely and disappointed, where I act out of my norm and display lower impulse control than I normally would have. The point is to find these emotional tensions and to recognize them as triggers so that the next time I have a flight delayed (not if I have a flight delayed, but when it happens, because it will happen again) and I am feeling lonely and disappointed that I recognize this. I need to pick up the phone and call my wife and talk to her so I don’t feel lonely. Realizing I am still going to get home safely and not to be so disappointed, it is only a matter of timing and an hour or two at most.  

If I can show Impulse Control in the moment, then I can delay my gratification.  Not so that I will never have a Chicken Club with extra Bacon, Kettle Chips, and a beer, but that I choose when I am going to have these things and that they are not a default pleasure for me.  

These default pleasures rarely if ever really satisfy.  It is better to plan and anticipate to enjoy the things you like rather than use them to cover some emotional wound that really isn’t that bad to begin with.

I also think it is really important when we notice these things, that we forgive ourselves and rather than beat ourselves up or throw in the towel or have a bunch of shame around it, we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, forgive ourselves, and put a plan in place so when it happens again we are ready to have better Impulse Control.

How Grateful Are You...Really?

The emotion of gratitude has received a lot of positive press in the last few years. 

Whether it is the popular Brene Brown talking on the relationship between joy and gratitude Or The TEDxSF talk by Louie Schwartzbert on Gratitude which has over 5M views.

However, after talking with my good friend and Pastor, Ken Bish, I think I have a brand new appreciation for this powerful emotion.

Ken shared his thoughts with me from his journal recently. I share his post below with his permission. I thought it might give you a chance to experience this emotion for yourself. 

Gratitude

How do we express it?  How do we make it sincere?   

If we are not careful, a form of expression that we express as gratitude is really either appeasement or manipulation.   Appeasement is originally fleshed out as a child when we are told, “Now you tell Mrs. Jones thank you for making you that lima bean casserole.”   So we learn to say thank you to placate others.   

Or we are told by others, “Oh, you are so great.  You are the best at ….”   Then the request comes, “can you do this for me?”  Because of that, we guard ourselves against giving or accepting gratitude.

Yet we want to express it but are uncertain how to genuinely do so.  I find myself in that spot right now.  I am honestly at a loss for words.   

The reason Ken is at a loss for words is that he has Liver Cancer and is in need of a transplant to save his life.

Ken’s Story

On Sunday, January 19th we rushed to Tampa General Hospital as we were told a liver was available and I was wheeled into surgery on Tuesday, January 21st.   

At times modern medicine makes us think surgeries are commonplace.  Yet it is almost impossible for me to fathom that a group of medical personnel has successfully removed a liver from someone who had just died and exchanged it for my cancerous liver.  How do I say thank you for that?  

As I said, I am honestly at a loss for words.

The doctors continue to tell us that I am doing exceptionally well.  That causes me to think my rubric for “doing well” is much different than the doctors.  

Prayers are appreciated for pain relief, being able to sleep and for overall healing.  The doctors tell us that the first 3 months are very important in terms of my body not rejecting the new liver.   The great news is we are on the right track!

I have so many people to thank. The medical personnel many of whom I do not know, along with my family and friends.  At this point in my early healing stage, simply talking has been extremely exhausting.  (I know what you are thinking:  Ken Bish cannot talk?  That is like Beethoven not being able to compose or Michelangelo not being able to paint or sculpt but that is for another post.) 

 I have listened to every voicemail; read every text, and considered every post.  Every one of them.  Please know that as I have read each one, I have intentionally thought back to a time God used you in my life and gave thanks to our Creator for you.  Each and every one of them. 

That is how I have chosen to express my gratitude.  I have sincerely thanked God for each of you. 

Finally, please hear these last two words which come from the depth of my heart:  “Thank you!”

Thanks, Ken for your courage and willingness to share your story and to model for so many of us what it means to be grateful.

The Power of Gratitude

I think you will agree with me that Ken has a lot to be grateful for. I mean, come on, a liver transplant. Really! Of course he is grateful.

As Ken continues to heal and be thankful, I think we all have this powerful spirit within us. To be thankful. To be courageous. To celebrate.

You do not have to have had a liver transplant to be thankful and experience gratitude.

I, for one, am grateful for you. Powerfully thankful for the people who have crossed the path of my life. You have added more joy to me than you will ever know.

Ken, I get it I think. Grateful to God for just one more day to be able to be in relationship with other humans. Thanks, my friend, for your courage.

Have you ever been surprised by this?

This is my third and final post in a series on the emotion of surprise. If you missed the first two, you can click here to catch up.

To be surprised by something is to have your attention shifted from one sense of reality to another. 

In organizations, it is popular to say that feedback is a gift. I have even said it myself! And, it is true…feedback is a gift. Sometimes, however, that gift is not appreciated at the time.  Sometimes feedback is like a good stew, and it has to simmer with the rest of the ingredients in order for us to be able to appreciate the overall flavor.  It takes time.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know my favorite book on the subject of feedback, is one by Douglas Stone and Shelia Heen; Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.

In their work, Doug and Shelia say feedback includes any information you get about yourself. It not only includes what gets ranked, but what gets thanked, commented on, and invited back or dropped. It can be formal, informal, direct, or implicit. It can be blunt or baroque (I had to look this word up if I am honest), totally obvious or so subtle you’re not sure what it is.

I think you can feel the complexity as Doug and Shelia unpack the idea a bit.

The other day my wife said to me from the kitchen, “Are you still in your office working?”  What do you mean am I still in my office working? Was my thought. Are you checking on me because you know how important this project is, or was that a passive-aggressive way to say stop working and come spend some time with me fixing dinner?  Are you excited about the project I am working on because you know how good it will be for the business, or are you sick of me spending so much time working and you want me to spend more time with you?

Now that is complex!

“Are you still in your office working?” Seven simple words. It could be she has just lost track of me and wants to know where I am. It could be that she has about had it with my “work ethic” and is going to make me choose between work and her.

She simply said the words, I am the one who is in the process of assigning the meaning to the words. 

Measuring the Tone of Feedback

I think feedback takes on this tenor. So many times we get feedback like, “Jerry takes a long time to get to the point.” This could mean I appreciate his level of detail, or he needs to be more concise. 

The deliverer of the feedback has an intention for sharing, the receiver of the feedback is impacted.  However, these two things, the intention and the impact, do not always come together.  

This is why feedback needs to be a conversation. It has to be reserved for those times when the intention of the deliverer and the impact it has on the receiver can be aligned.  If there is not time for the alignment, much like putting on a new set of tires on a car without balancing them, they might roll but the ride will be rough and you will not get as good of gas mileage as you would had you taken the time to align the tires from the start.

My Feedback Gift

At Christmas time every year, my mother-in-law gives my wife and me a card.  That is no surprise.

The cards are beautiful expressions of the season of Christmas and come complete with words from Hallmark where the important words are underlined and circled. In addition, there is a handwritten bible verse along with some personal expressions of love and gratitude.  These cards are priceless. I really cherish the thoughts and the sentiments that are shared.

The surprise this year is that in the card my mother-in-law did an acrostic of both mine and my wife’s names.  I know you know what an acrostic is, but just in case, it is where the first letter of each line spells out a specific word. 

In the card was our Names:

S

C

O

T

T

&

K

I

M

M

I

J

O

Then what she did was to put a word that described us next to each letter. Now I am not going to share what was written for each letter. But I am going to share two of the letters in my name. To me, they were very interesting because they represented feedback on how I show up.  Also interesting because in my mind some contrast is present.

C-Candid

T-Tolerant

Here is the thing about surprise, what did she mean when she put candid and tolerant together?

Candid, am I too forthright with my opinion? Usually, candid means truthful and straightforward, but it could also be hurtful if not accompanied by empathy.

Tolerant, am I too accepting of opinions I do not agree with? Or am I patient with people not like me?

Norma’s perspective of me is that I am both candid and tolerant.  This is just such good feedback.  I think what is needed is to sit down with her over a hot cup of tea and explore what she means by this so I can make sure I am showing up as intended….honest, caring, and compassionate.

Surprise: A Requirement for Getting Unstuck

Last week I wrote a bit on the emotion of surprise and the value that a professional coach can bring to an organization.

This week, I want to give you a specific example of how using the emotion of surprise can be a valuable tool to have in your tool belt as a coach. 

A Story

I am currently working with the most amazing individual. Super talented. Highly prized by the organization. Gifted with skills in finance. Gifted with people.  

There is just this one thing that is constantly nagging, pulling this leader down into the depths of almost despair. It is noticeable by me and by others I have interviewed in the organization.

This leader shows up in the dumps, a little bit like the fictional character Eeyore from Winnie The Pooh. Eeyore, who is famously known for saying things like, “It’s not much of a tail, but I’m sort of attached to it.”  My client would say, “I did the best I could with the time I had."

Eeyore: “If it is a good morning, which I doubt.”
My client: “I will have to wait until the end of the day to tell you if it was good or not.”

Eeyore: “Thanks for noticin’ me.”;
My client: “It was nothin.’”

 The conversations are always a bit on the negative side.  When we talked about this, the client’s reaction was “I’m just trying to be humble. I really don’t want to be seen as bragging, taking credit, or a know-it-all.”

Then came this, “Dr. Livingston, you are one of the smartest people I know, I hope you can help me with this.”  

The Surprise

"I understand your desire to be seen as humble,” I empathized, “it is really a noble character trait.”

“Although I have to say if you think I am one of the smartest people you know, you need to get out and meet more people. I know it feels to you like you have a sense of inferiority and you are positioning this as humility.”

Then I asked the surprising question, to try to help get the leader unstuck: What if this inferiority you are feeling is a facade that is really masking a deeper felt (sometimes unconscious) sense of superiority?

Long pause…..deafening silence….almost a full minute.

"What do you mean?” the client asked.

What if this Eeyore facade is really masking what you really feel, which is that you are pretty good. Is it possible you do not want to be seen as arrogant, so to guard against this you show up as what you are calling humble, but is actually experienced by others as inferiority.*

Long pause…More deafening silence….felt like an hour.

“I have never really thought about it that way before. I don’t know if you are right or not but it is interesting.”

Coaching goal accomplished.  

By bringing an element of surprise into the discussion, the client is now unstuck. Since a safe space had been created with the client, and an air of trust existed, the element of surprise was a great emotion to lean on.  

As an external coach, I don’t need to be right.  In my mind, it is not about being right or wrong, it is about helping the client to get unstuck and move.

Often times, the emotion of surprise is useful as it jars the client from what they are seeing or experiencing into a new reality.  

As an internal coach, consider cautiously using this technique, because of the need to have a longterm relationship. However, I do think it is possible to be used from time to time to help a person get a glimpse of a different reality.

---

*The theory I was using here was not out of left field. While I didn’t need to be right, it is at least important to be grounded. According to Dr. Aqualus Gordon, "While not necessarily evidence of a full complex, examples of this inferiority dynamic are observable when we do things like:

• Reject praise we duly deserve.

• Fish for compliments via self-deprecation (e.g., humble-bragging).

• Or portray helplessness during situations in which we have power.

The client was rejecting praise and did show up as helpless when in complete control. So this was a risk worth taking in my mind to help the client get unstuck.

A Surprising Thing About Coaching

Surprise is an interesting emotion! Unlike disgust, which always carries a negative theme, and happiness, which emotes such a positive feeling. 

Surprise is an emotion that can go either way, positive or negative, and can shift from negative to positive in the blink of an eye.

Here is what I mean:

“Surprise, you are getting a raise!” Unexpected and positive. How fun!

“Surprise, we are downsizing and your services are no longer needed.” Unexpected and not so fun.

I can even recall when my wife Kim told me we were going to have our third child around 27 years ago…”Surprise, I am pregnant!” I think were her words. 

“Holy Crap!” Unexpected and a feeling of fear, replaced in a nanosecond by the feeling of overwhelming joy. “Really, that is amazing!” followed by an unexplainable feeling of love and closeness with my spouse.

Surprise has a way of intensifying our other emotions.  According to Ingred Fatell Lee, author of the book Joyful: The Surprising Power Of Ordinary Things To Create Extraordinary Happiness, surprise acts like a magnifying glass for joy by giving the tiny pleasure heightened significance.

Surprise is one of the six primary emotions identified by psychologist Paul Ekman and is so necessary as a human because it can quickly divert our attention from one thing to another. Surprise is a kind of a warning signal to say “Hey, pay attention to this new thing, that other thing you were concentrating on needs to be deprioritized and this new thing needs some focus.”

Surprise ranges in intensity from amazement to a mild distraction.  

I Was Surprised

I was recently having a conversation with a friend who was trying to get a better idea of what my coaching business was all about.

“Tell me what you do again?” he asked.

“I help people get an idea of what their leadership looks like,” I told him.  “By using some assessments, and interviewing people they interact with, I give them a mosaic of what their leadership looks like. I then come alongside them and help them make any changes they see in their approach.  In a nutshell, that is what I do.”

“And they pay you for that?” He said to me, rather surprised!  “Sounds like you get paid to be people’s friend.”

Interestingly, I had just read an interesting and quite provocative article by Christopher Shelly titled “A Friend Officiated Our Wedding And Now My Husband’s Dead.” (Isn’t that title a bit surprising?)

Here is a link to the article if you are interested A Friend Officiated Our Wedding And Now My Husband’s Dead. It is about a 4-minute read but in case you don’t want to click through, here are the highlights…

To save money this couple….

• Hires a fried to do their wedding. It is a disaster, but they save money.

• Hires a friend to cater the reception. It is a disaster, but they save money.

• Hires a friend to fix the transmission in their car. It is a disaster but they save money.

• Hire a friend to do open heart surgery on her new husband….

I think you can see where this is going.

I heard Dave Ramsey, the author of Total Money Makeover, say one time, “If you own a $200 car then you can afford to try and fix it yourself. If you own a $20,000 car then you probably should have a professional work on it.”

Can you coach people in your own organization? Sure you can! And I would even argue that a culture of coaching in an organization is a very positive thing. 

But, when you need a professional, hire one. 

A Strategic Piece of Advice for When You Receive Critical Feedback

One of the most difficult things any of us can experience in our organizational life is to receive critical feedback.

So often we speak as if like feedback, we value feedback, we even welcome feedback.  I worked with a client a number of years ago who’s mantra was "We are a feedback-rich environment!"

But let's be honest, most of the time this desire for feedback is because we want validation that things are going really well. 

Do we have the same reactions however when the feedback we receive is more critical? Is there a best way to respond when you are given feedback that your performance is not up to standard or that your behaviors are not valued by others?

Misaligned Expectations

I had a client call me a few weeks ago and he was audibly frustrated when I answered the phone. We really didn’t even exchange any pleasantries like, "How are you doing?" to start our conversation.  He just dug right in…

“Scott, you would not believe my boss and what she just did! We have been working really hard all year to deliver on a really important project for one of our top internal customers.  The project has gone well overall, the client has been very pleased and there have been zero complaints, and we are even under budget. When I sat down to review the project as part of my performance review, my boss acknowledged my hard work and then said I would be getting an average performance rating. Average! I can tell you my performance was anything but average!”

 He said that he just sat there just stunned and ask himself, "How could anything on the project went any better? Average performance? What do you have to do to get a top performance recognition around here?”

He told me that he was so emotional that he couldn’t even hear anything else his boss was saying to him. All he wanted to know was WHY she felt this way. Was she paying attention at all? 

Receiving Feedback that Feels Critical

I think there are times in our corporate lives when we receive critical feedback that is not intended to be harmful but it sure feels like it is to us.  

I said to the young man on the phone, “It sounds to me like what your boss is saying is that your performance is like that of most people in the organization and that means that it is good enough that they want you to stick around for the near future.”

That went over like a ton of bricks.

“Scott, you have no idea how hard I worked, how many hours, what we did to make that project happen on time and under budget.”

“I am sure I don’t understand the details, but I am wondering if you are hearing the message your boss is trying to send. She is saying well done, but since you are expecting to hear 'excellent,' and you are not, what you are hearing is 'bad.'”   

Then I said, “Are you sure her message to you is BAD?”

I don’t think he heard my question because he was still so fired up that he said to me, “All I want to know is WHY she feels this way."

“That may be the wrong question,” I said,  “I think what you want to really know is HOW you could do better next time to get the rating you are expecting."

When we get feedback that feels critical in nature, our natural urge is to defend ourselves. We can’t help it, it is part of our hard-wiring. The goal as you work to develop yourself as a leader is to overcome these natural defense mechanisms and develop new response mechanisms so that you can learn and grow.

Your Experience

Have you ever experienced this? I mean, worked really hard on something, poured your life into it, thought you were doing really well, and then suddenly you are confronted with the feeling that what you are doing isn’t really good enough?

If you have been in an organization long enough you no doubt have experienced this type of misaligned expectation or critical feedback. The feedback may not be critical in the sense that it is mean or demeaning, just that what you are doing or working on has some room for improvement.

Strategic Advice

Here is what I want to encourage you to do when you feel like you are receiving Critical Feedback.

1. Step back and try and not take the criticism personally.

2. Take a deep breath and let go of the negative, defensive feeling.

3. Change your WHY to HOW. Focus on what your improvement needs to be rather than have your boss defend their position.

In the end, your supervisor feels how they feel, and there is probably little you can do in the moment to change his/her mind. The question is less about WHY they feel the way they do and more about WHAT you need to do differently and HOW you can make changes for the future.

A Vaccination for Leadership Failure

Who wants to fail as a leader? No one.

None of us wakes up in the morning and says, “Let me see how I can totally screw up the thing I am working on today."

And yet…Here is my story.

4 Things to Look for in Wise Counsel (2)

A number of years ago, I had been a fairly successful sales professional and tapped for a management development program. The company I worked for was growing like crazy. Most people spent less than 2 years in this program before they were tapped for their first management level job. I thought I had arrived! Look at me! Watch me climb! Nothing will stop my career! These were all thoughts I had at the time. I was on top of the world and it felt great.

My wife and I moved from my sales territory in Decatur, Illinois to the corporate headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our family consisted of my wife and I along with our 2-year-old son Zach, and a precious baby girl due in about 6 weeks. The plan was to be in Indianapolis for less than 2 years before our next move into my first management level job. So, I did what every person with a dream, a wife, and 2 young kids does….

I went out and bought a 2 seat sports car.

I rationalized it by telling myself, "Hey, we already own a minivan. No problem."

Fast forward 5 years later. That's right, my 2-year window for promotion had gone to 5! The company hit a tight spot. No one got promoted for 3 years beyond my 2-year window. And on top of the career slow down, my wife and I had another baby boy! We were now a family of 5, with a minivan and a second car that is a Mazda Rx 7.

Great car, yet totally not practical when my wife took the minivan to go shopping one Saturday and left me with the 3 kids and a couple of friends kids. Scott and 5 kids on a Saturday morning, normally not a problem, until Zach comes out holding his hand over his eye and blood dripping down having just been whacked on the head with a toy by one of the other kids.

Question: How do I get 5 kids and me in the Rx7 and to the hospital to get Zach stitched up?

The Lesson

There is an ancient Proverb that says “Before his downfall a man's heart is proud."

I will admit it. I was full of pride. Proud of my career. Proud of my family. Proud of how I had achieved.

What is the problem with pride? It blocks your vision of reality. As leaders, we puff ourselves up for everyone to see.

What are some things that feed our pride as leaders?

1. People come to you for decision making.

2. People look to you for safety (job security).

3. People look to you as an expert in your field.

4. People feel comfortable knowing you are there.

5. You make people feel they are important.

6. You give people a feeling of optimism.

7. You give people a sense of hope.

8. You are near the top of the food chain.

9. People seek your advice and counsel.

10. Your opinions are sought and considered.

The great writer CS Lewis says that the problem with your pride is that it is in competition with everyone else's pride. Pride at its very root is competitive. “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man,” according to Lewis.

More money. Bigger house. Better looking. Smarter. Prettier wife. More loving husband. Most successful kids. Harder worker. Coolest job.

The problem with pride is not the metric, but what we do with it. It is in our nature to compare. It is how we know where we are. The problem with pride is an inability to be content and a desire for control. It is a scarcity mentality that says “for me to be up in life, you must be down.”

This is a lie.

Great leaders find ways for everyone to be up.

What I have learned over the years is that when I begin feeling like this, full of pride, I better watch my next step.

The Vaccination

When things go wrong, we begin to think about treatment. Treatment is about fixing the problem. Vaccination, however, is about prevention.

Treatment in the medical world is meant to help you recover from something that has happened to you. A vaccination is meant to prevent the disease in the first place.

The second part of the Proverb I mentioned above states, “but humility comes before honor."

Being humble. Putting others ahead of your pride. Being modest in your opinion of yourself. Thinking of others as better than yourself is one way to overcome pride.

The question I have been asking myself is, are there any strategies for preventing pride in the first place?

How can you vaccinate yourself against pride that often accompanies Leadership?

Here is a shot in the arm that can help you prevent Leadership Pride. This might sting a little, but here comes the needle...

Seek Wise Counsel.

That didn’t hurt too bad, did it?

Looking back on my story, I really should have sought wise counsel about buying that car. Not only was it impractical, but the assumptions I used to frame my reality regarding my career and my family were askew. They just were not based in reality. Just because the business was in an up cycle didn’t mean it was going to stay that way forever. Some wise counsel at that time could have been just the vaccination the doctor would have prescribed to prevent me from making such a poor decision.

There is another Proverb that says “Without counsel plans are frustrated, but with many counselors, plans succeed."

As you are thinking about getting wise counsel in your life, what should you look for? Here are a few things I have found as I have researched the topic:

4 Things to Look for in Wise Counsel:

1. Experience. Why not ask someone who has been down the road what the path looks like?

2. Impulse Control. Look for someone who is not going to be swayed by your emotional rationale. You do not want someone who will agree with you all the time. You want another perspective on what reality looks like. A person who is patient enough to hear you out.

3. Courage. Having an ability to disagree with you is paramount to you being able to learn and grow.

4. Empathy. Someone who can see your perspective even if they do not agree. Empathy differs from sympathy in that the empathic person will ask the hard question when it is in your best interest. The sympathetic person will just agree with you in whatever state you are in.

So often in leader development, we screw up and look for a treatment remedy for what has happened. Why not look to prevent these potential failures in leadership by vaccinating yourself against tragedy? Seeking wise counsel may be one good shot in the arm for you as a leader.

Homework

Look for a leadership decision you have coming up. Seek out some wise counsel. Lay the topic out for those you are seeking input from, without bias or telling them your preferences. Consider what they say to you before you act.

2 Minute Read to Improve Your 2020 Vision

When I was a kid my mom would tell me I needed to eat more carrots to improve my vision. If I wanted to be able to see with clarity, her wisdom of the time was for me to crunch on a few orange root sticks. Mom’s advice, while heartfelt and well meaning, did not ultimately keep me from becoming farsighted and needing sight correction to be able to see clearly.

Many of us will get well meaning advice as we approach the new year, reading and listening to experts drone on and on about goal setting and how you must have a goal if you want to accomplish anything.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with setting a goal, it can be a bit meaningless if not aligned with the vision of who you want to be as a leader. 

Envision Your Future You As A Leader

As the calendar changes from 2019 many of us will  begin tithing about what we want to accomplish in 2020. Most of us will make some kind of resolution to make a change as the new year rolls in.

A resolution is “a firm decision to do or not do something”.

Like you, In the past I have made many types of New Year’s Resolutions:

• Personal: Eat right, exercise more, and lose 10 pounds

• Professional: Increase sales by 20% by becoming more customer centric

• Family: Become a better listener when talking with my wife

• Spiritual: Read through the Bible in a year

All good stuff. I am sure many of you are making resolutions and talking with your friends and family about them over the next few days.

I thought I might challenge you to add a category this year. In addition to your personal, professional, family, and spiritual resolutions, think about a resolution to improve your leadership. Envision yourself becoming  the leader you want to be in the future.

Leadership

Here are 10 Ideas to get your thinking started on what you could resolve to do or not do in 2020 when it comes to your leadership.  I pulled this list from some of our more popular blog posts we have done over the years.

1. Reflect on being a great leader and what is keeping you from being great.  Who among us doesn’t want to be seen as a great leader? And yet, so many of us have some barrier that we just don’t want to see or do anything about. 

2. Work on your values before your vision.

3. Spend less time working and more time thinking. This idea runs counter culture to our “doing” mentality. Perhaps you need to work less and think more to enhance your ability to lead. 

4. If you were a brand (like Kleenex or Toyota), what would your value proposition be?

5. Who in your organization do you need to network with. 

6. What piece of FeedForward advice do you need to seek out? In our organizations we are so good at feedback. We just love telling people what we observed them doing.  Why not start a culture of FeedForward? Perhaps we could all get a little better at offering some solutions in addition to what we see in others that we don’t like. 

7. What cycle of negative thinking will you break this year?

8. How are you resting in the middle of your work day? Studies are showing how important rest is for leaders to maintain their effectiveness. How are you cycling your work to maximize your performance?

9. Take your emotional intelligence temperature. Are you able to choose how you react or are you “slave” to your knee jerk reactions?

10. Whatever change you make, put a plan in place to sustain it and get some coaching to keep you accountable.

I am looking forward to being with you on your leadership journey. If there are subjects you would like tackled on these pages just drop me a line. i am happy to do the research and write about what interests you.

My prayer for you is that you have a productive and effective leadership year.

Blessings to you and your families.

PS. If you know someone who might be interested in growing as a leader, why not forward them this blog and have them sign up? It’s free and easy and we guarantee they will gets tons of value.

Give Me 1 More Week and I Will Improve Your Stress Resilience - Making Stress Your Friend

Since this post will hit your inbox a day or two prior to Christmas, I am going to keep it relatively short.

Over the last few weeks I have been working through a series on describing the habits I have noticed over the years of stress resilient people. You know the types, it seems like their world is caving in around them and yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure. If you’d like to catch up or review the previous posts, you can find them by clicking here.

If you don’t want to click back and forth, I will give you the first 4 steps in improving your stress resilience:

1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “Why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.

1. The second lesson I have learned about being more stress resilient is when you are undergoing adversity, to carefully choose where to focus your attention. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them.  But we can get so wrapped up in the wrong little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the learning. Choose wisely where you focus your attention.

2.  The the third observation I have made about people who seem to have high stress resilience is they have an ability to find the good in the circumstance or the people. How they frame life seems to be very appreciative.

3. The fourth thing that I have noticed about people who are resilient in times of stress and ambiguity is that they can answer one key question for themselves. The question is this: “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?”  Our focus as leaders needs to be on the kinds of things that will actually help me instead of making my “stress hole” even bigger.

My perspective

The final post in this series is the most important of all. The reason is, for example, you can do your best to ask yourself, “is what I am doing helping or harming me?” which is the fourth suggestion I made to improve your stress resilience. And indeed, if you focus on this question, your resilience to stress should improve. 

However, what I have observed is people who ask themselves the question, “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” will work really hard to convince themselves that the harm they are actually doing to themselves is not really hurting them. 

This is why human connection is so important in creating stress resilience. In one of the most impactful studies I have reviewed on the subject of stress resilience actually has to do with living longer. Poulin, Brown Dillard Smith (2013) out of the University of Buffalo monitored participant mortality and time to death for 5 years by way of newspaper obituaries and monthly state death-record tapes.

Mortality revealed a significant interaction between helping behavior and stressful events. 

Specifically, stress did not predict mortality risk among individuals who provided help to others in the past year, but stress did predict mortality among those who did not provide help to others. 

Bottom line is, creating human connection and helping others can help you live longer.

And not just creating human connection, but when you do, listen to those who you connect with. 

Story

My wife and I were back home in Peoria, Illinois this past weekend to celebrate Christmas with my mom. It was a really nice weekend connecting with mom and my siblings. We spent the afternoon together on both Saturday and Sunday. At the end of our time together on Sunday, my wife and I went to a Christmas show at one of the local churches in town. ‘

When we went into the church the weather was a bit cold and the sky was overcast.  About 2 hours later when we came out of the show, there was about 2.5 inches of snow on the ground and near blizzard driving conditions. It took us quite a while to get out of the church parking lot, and once we got on the main roads they were snow packed and very slippery to drive on. 

I have been driving on snow and ice since I was 14 years old in my dad’s old pickup truck, usually in a parking lot somewhere just to get some practice. So, I know how to drive in pretty treacherous conditions.

However, about 7 years ago my wife and I got out of the midwest snow belt, and moved ourselves to sunny Florida.  Not much snow to drive through in the Sunshine state! 

Needless to say I was a bit nervous driving, not as much for me, but as we made our way back to where we were staying there were cars all over in ditches. The result, no doubt, of forgetting the important rules of driving on snow and ice. My nerves had more to do with not knowing the skill level of other people driving then knowing myself what to do and not do. 

It was all a bit stressful, to say the least.

I was really glad I had my wife along with me because her human connection really made me want to make stress my friend and listen to what my body was telling me. Having Kim in the passenger seat next to me heightened my own sense of self-awareness and self-preservation. 

I could feel the stress with every quarter-mile that we drove. Sometimes the back end of the car sliding, sometimes the front wheels just not get anyone traction on the wet surface. Feeling the stress and embracing it helped me in the moment to realize this was not a time for heroics. Not at all a time to “see how fast the car could go” or “how close could I get to the car in front of me.” My stress was actually my friend in that it was telling me to keep a safe distance from other vehicles. 

I also really tried to listen to my wife as she became my copilot, searching for the best route for us to take and making sure I was still on a drivable road surface.  I think so many times we get into stressful situations and our knee jerk reaction is to just bear down and do it all ourselves. This is a time, when you are making stress your friend, to really listen to others.

This listening can really help you answer the question “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?” If I am willing to listen to others input then I am less likely to make a mistake; convincing myself that something that is really destined to harm me will help me.

My Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Stress Resilience

In summary here are my top 5 ways for you to improve your stress resilience

1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. 

1.  Choose where to focus your attention.

2.  Find the good in the circumstance or the people. 

3. Ask Yourself; “Is what I am doing helping or harming me?”  

4. Make Stress Your Friend

Now go out there and have a stress free Christmas and a very happy new year!

Give Me 3 More Weeks and I will Improve Your Stress-Resilience: Find the Good

Over the last few weeks, I have been working through a blog series on describing the habits I have noticed throughout the years of stress-resilient people.

You know the types, it seems like their world is caving in around them, yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure. If you missed them, you can find the first two posts in the series here.

If you don’t want to click back and forth I will just give you the first steps in improving your stress resilience:

1. Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine, per se. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.

2. The second lesson I have learned about being more stress-resilient is when you are undergoing adversity, carefully choose where to focus your attention. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them. But we can get so wrapped up in the wrong little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the learning. Choose wisely where you focus your attention.

These two posts lead me to the third observation I have made about people who seem to have high stress-resilience;

They have the ability to find the good in the circumstance or the people. How they frame life seems to be very appreciative. Before we unpack this, let’s go over some data on the topic just to cement the need.

Coping Successfully With Stressful Life Events

There is a really good chance, even if you are someone who is fairly stress-resilient, that as you are reading this, the person on your right AND the person on your left is not so good.

A recent (2013) survey of adults and teens commissioned by the American Psychological Association showed 65% of people said managing their stress is very or extremely important (I found this a little lower than I would have thought), but just 38% said they do at least a good job of managing stressful situations.

So, we as humans think something is important and we recognize we are not very good at it. And for way too many of us, that is where the story ends. But not for people who are more stress-resilient. And it turns out that for most of us, it can be a simple shift in perspective.

Lets examine the most prevalent emotion people experience in stressful situations…Anxiety.

There is data to suggest that 1 in 5 Americans will suffer from a diagnosed anxiety disorder in a given year. Anxiety is the most prevalent emotional stress response.

A common definition of Anxiety is "…facing an uncertain threat.” We see something in our future, either real or perceived, that we don’t know or understand as going to do us harm. A situation or a context like this will cause us to feel anxious.

Our anxious feeling is telling us something about our uncertainty in the situation and often gets compounded by other negative thoughts or emotions until we get ourselves so worked up that we can not even remember what the root cause of our anxiety really is.

A Personal Story

Let’s play with this definition for anxiety a bit and see if we can build some stress-resilient muscle in the process.

I’ll offer up a personal story as a frame for our learning.

This time of year always creates a bit of an anxious time for me as a solopreneur. Many of the coaching and training engagements that have been running in 2019 will be coming to an end. Many of my clients are changing approaches in how they are using services like the ones I offer.

I can become anxious about where my business is going to come from in 2020.

5 Things to notice in this short story.

1. The main character in the story is me.

2. The story I created in my head is that business is uncertain (see the definition of anxiety).

3. The story I created has a threatening tone (see the definition of anxiety).

4. The timing context of the story is a perception I am feeling.

5. Clients are changing so that means they won’t need me any longer.

Being Stress Resilient

People who are stress-resilient have adaptive resources in both cognitive and emotional arenas to be able to handle the story they are perceiving.

One of the most important adaptive strategies is to find the good in the situation.

I know what you might be saying because I have said it myself…”What could possibly be good about losing clients or business in 2020?” Frankly NOTHING! But we are not working at the right level to deal with the anxiety. There is nothing good about losing business, feeling rejected, or having to experience lean times in business. Please hear me; I am not one of those Pollyanna overly optimistic leader development guys. You know the type, they just don’t seem to live in the same world as I do when it comes to being anxious about losing something important.

What I am advocating for here is letting go of the outcome.

Since what I am projecting in my stressful and anxious situation has not happened yet, there is time for me to do something about it. In essence, I need to Find the Good in the inputs that will ultimately drive the outcome.

Focus on Quality Inputs

If I can let go of the outcome, just for a moment, that is causing my anxious feeling and focus on Finding the Good in the inputs, will this lessen or eliminate my anxiety?

That becomes the central question for people who have the ability to be resilient.

What I am going to do is to Find the Good in the 5 elements of my short story above and see if I feel less anxious. Here they are repeated with a reframing of each of them to find the good:

5 Things to notice in this short story.

1. The main character in the story is me. This business has never been about me. It is about the clients I serve and the good we do for them. Part of my work here is to get the story off of me and to focus on those I serve. In doing so, my needs, whatever they are, will be met.

2. The story I created in my head is that business is uncertain (see the definition for anxiety). Business is complex, it is not uncertain. Now more than ever in recorded history organizations need leadership development. My clients are good people who can use my objective perspective on developing leaders in their organizations.

3. The story I created has a threatening tone (see the definition for anxiety). The threatening tone I am picking up is one of perceived loss. That this loss will mean a loss of income, so I won’t be able to meet the needs of my business. I may have to close my operation and do something else that I don’t love near as much. I hope you see in this how a threat can cycle down into a negative vortex of things that are so far from being real at the moment. But this vortex of fear can become paralyzing, and none of it is real. The good in the story is for me to get excited about some of the plans I have for 2020, rather than how I can make my reality less horrible than I am seeing it. I want to be excited about the opportunities I have and not just see how I can squeak by.

4. The timing context of the story is a perception I am feeling. Coming to an end feels like such a threat. While I do have some engagements that are ending; 75% of my business comes from existing clients. So that I may have individual clients that will rotate off my schedule, but that does not mean that my relationship with the organization has to end. The good in this is that nothing is ending, it is just an opportunity to start over and learn something new.

5. Clients are changing so that means they won’t need me any longer. My clients are changing. Fact. But this does not mean they no longer need a service like the one I provide. Change doesn’t have to be a threat. It can be a golden opportunity. I need to become curious about what life is like for them and find additional ways to partner with them using the services I provide.

So, there you have a nice little reframing exercise.

Step 1. Don’t focus on the outcome

Step 2. Focus on the quality of your inputs by finding the good in your story.

Spend some time with this little exercise. If you are feeling anxious about something, write it down. Then find the inputs and turn them from negative toward the good. See if this helps you become less anxious about your situation.

I love feedback, so if you try this I would love to hear your story.

Give Me 4 More Weeks and I will Improve Your Stress Resilience

Last week I began a series describing the habits I have noticed throughout the years of stress-resilient people.

You know the types - it seems like their world is caving in around them, yet they have an ability to remain cool under pressure.

To recap, the first step in improving your stress resilience is:

Come to grips with the idea that bad stuff is just going to happen to you. You are not immune to adversity, and there is no vaccine. Reframe your attitude from “Why did this happen to me?” to “Why not me?” Adversity is as much a part of life as joy.

The second lesson I have learned about being more stress-resilient is to carefully choose where to focus your attention in times of adversity. When things come into our lives that don’t go the way we want them to, we are meant to learn something from them. But, we can get so wrapped up in the little details, or in the emotions surrounding the event, that we can miss the lesson.

Last week I wrote about losing one of my biggest clients, quite unexpectedly, and really through no fault of my own. I had been teaching for years in their company’s management development program. I would do some work with emerging leaders; helping them define their leadership principles as well as teaching other leaders the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. I did this work for over 7 years and got great reviews every time we did a class. Then, I got a phone call that the company was reorganizing and they were not sure how they would be approaching training in the future.

So in one phone call, I lost one of my biggest and best clients. At least, I lost that opportunity with the client in a very ambiguous sort of way.

According to Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss, “People hunger for certainty.” We all like stability and to know, or at least to have the idea that we know, what is going to happen in the future. So, according to Boss, “…uncertainty makes ambiguous loss the most distressful of all losses…” This is because the loss is often very confusing. People can actually become immobilized by not being able to make sense of the situation. In my case, it was tough, because I always held a belief that if you did a great job for a customer, work would always follow. And while I think the basic tenant is true, there are just things that happen in business that are not in my control.

Second, the ambiguous loss felt very much to me like it was irrational. How could they no longer love me? How could such a great company no longer invest in leaders? As I thought about all of this, my mind became fixated on the loss. So much so I was starting to get physically exhausted. By focusing on the wrong part of the loss, I was losing my perspective.

My Intervention

I was telling this story to my coach during one of my monthly sessions with him. After our session, as I am prone to do, I sat and summarized the coaching in a journal I keep. Here is my entry:

-Don’t lose what you have to what you lost!

-What do I need to be learning through all of this?

At the same time this loss was happening to me, I was teaching a group of doctoral students at Indiana Wesleyan University.. I had been reviewing an article by Lila Davachi, Tobias Kiefer, David Rock, and Lisa Rock titled Learning that lasts through the AGES.

AGES is a 4 part acronym:

• Attention is critical.

• Generating insights takes time.

• Emotions govern.

• Spaced learning sticks.

Here is what I learned from each part of the AGES Model during my stressful time:

Attention is critical and I needed to focus on the customers I am still able to serve. Just because I lost this one thing should not affect how I serve those I am still blessed to work with.

Generating insights takes time. I have a tendency to want to rush things. If I am going to learn from this loss, I needed to give myself some space and realize that time does have a healing component to it.

Emotions govern and I get to choose how I feel. Sure, I was going to miss these great folks I had worked with and to some degree, I mourned the loss. And I am also joyful that I have other clients and in fact, I have been able to keep relationships with many folks at this company. So it turns out I really didn’t lose them, the work there just changed for me and looks very different.

Spaced learning sticks. I needed to process this learning over time and in chunks. You can not learn everything you need to learn all at once. Spacing things out, keeping them fresh in your journal, will really help you maximize your learning.

Summary Thought

For those of you wanting to improve your stress resilience, one of the most important points is to carefully choose what you will focus your attention on. You get to pick. You can focus on the pain and stay there. You can focus on how you were treated and dwell.

Or

You can appropriately accept and mourn your loss, and then focus on all the good things you still have.

Choose wisely.

That last thought actually will be the focus of next week’s post…Appreciate the good.

See you next week!

The Secret for Being Stress Resilient | Part 1: Getting A Grip

Spoiler Alert.

Over the next 5 weeks, I will be writing on the idea of becoming more Stress Resilient. I thought going deep on one particular topic might be kind fo fun, so let me know what you think about the series format! I hope you enjoy it, but if not, I’d love to know that as well.

So many of the clients I am working with these days are undergoing very fundamental changes in their business models. How they used to do things even two years ago are being drastically altered by changing customer demands or big shifts in market dynamics.

One of the things I have noticed when changes like this occur is the desire people have to go back to the way things “used to be.”

There is something innately comforting for us all in the known, even when the known is not our most desirable state.

Many years ago, I used to get on an airplane and fly across the country to teach a one day class in a management development program. I really loved the experience and developed many great relationships along the journey. The travel was hard. Exhausting even. But there was real comfort for me in getting on a plane on a Tuesday, flying all day. Then teaching all day on Wednesday. Spending the night in a hotel and flying home on Thursday. This work ended up taking 3 days for one day of actual work. And I loved it! No matter how hard it was, or how tired I got, I loved the work.

My wife would often say things like, “Why do you do that to yourself? Why don’t you find a client who is local so you don’t have to spend 2 days on an airplane for one day of work?”

Sometimes the truth really hurts.

Did I listen? Heck NO! I kept getting on the airplane. I loved this client. My wife could tell, so much so that from time to time she would suggest we move to California.

Then all of a sudden, it was all gone. The company reorganized how they were doing their training and the work I loved was no more.

All of that comfort was gone. All of those great relationships vanishing into thin air. All the fantastic people I was able to interact with and learn from…poof. No more.

All of this happened over the course of a single month.

Lesson 1

After I got off the phone with my client who explained to me that they were moving in a different direction with how they were going to train leaders my initial reaction was, “Oh no! Now what am I going to do?” I think this is pretty typical for us as humans during times of change or ambiguous types of loss to get self-referential and concerned for our own well being.

I can remember not knowing what to do exactly. I had an appointment with my coach the next day and planned to talk it through with him at that time. So, in the meantime, I did something that made me feel good, I went and worked out. I thought a good cardiovascular workout to the point of exhaustion was just what I needed to clear my head and think about what my options really were at the time.

I made it to the gym and got on the treadmill and my trainer Thomas said this to our group: “This is going to be a rough 23 minutes on the treadmills today. You are going to have increases in the incline of the treadmill every 2 minutes. I want you to start running at a push pace and maintain that pace as long as you can as you ascend.”

Then the gold came out of Thomas’s mouth, “This is not going to be easy, but as the climb continues I want you to envision: Your Future You!”

That is exactly what I needed to hear. I finished my workout and when I got home I went straight to my journal and wrote:

Adversity doesn’t discriminate. It happens to all of us as humans. It is really part of the human condition. I need to better understand that shit happens. I don’t want it to happen but it does.

Then I started to do something that I work with my coaching clients all the time - I reframed the adversity.

I started with “why not me?”

Look, I had a really good ride with that client. Almost 10 years and we really had a fantastic relationship. It was really awesome. Now they are doing things differently, and so I need to do things differently as a result.

WHY NOT ME?

This is exactly what needed to happen in order for me to start doing some things I had wanted to do all along.

The climb is not going to be easy (now my trainer Thomas is in my head), and I need to start to design my Future Me!

How about You?

Are things changing really quickly around you? I guess you can just sit there and take it and let the chips fall where they might, randomly without much of your input. You could bury your head in the sand and hope that the change that is happening doesn’t see you and just passes you buy.

Or, you can sit down and start to design your future you.

I wonder when you get to your future what your future you will say to your past you who decided to take the bull by the horns and create its destiny?

The other thing I would like to add is just a thought for all of you who are leading others through times of change and ambiguity.

And that is, in order to reduce stress, an important leadership challenge is to reduce follower uncertainty. Part of your job is to make the change as transparent as you possibly can. Even if you have to say you don’t know, be authentic and do your best. People still need a feeling of security, even when you don’t have the answers.

I believe that in a dynamic environment, leaders can reduce this uncertainty by continually communicating and reinforcing five key questions for the organization: who we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. Answering these questions for followers can tap into some basic needs that influence human behavior.

If you don’t know what to say, then maybe just articulating some answers to these questions might be helpful.

5 Steps Toward Sustainable Change

This is a very busy time of year for many of us.  In the U.S. we are celebrating Thanksgiving this week, which means the ever-looming Christmas craziness is just around the corner.

For many of you, that can only mean one thing...

It is performance review time.

That time when you will sit down with your supervisor and go over the goals you set for the year and measure your performance against those standards. Or, at least that is how it is supposed to work in theory.

For all of you over-achievers out there, this can be an anxious time. Most of us who work in organizations get up every morning and our self-created goal is to do the very best we can every day. Sometimes what we are supposed to do isn’t very clear. Sometimes what we are supposed to do changes, it seems, on an hourly basis. Most times what we know is important to do gets hijacked by the tyranny of someone else's agenda. And sometimes what we were hired to do is not what we end up doing at all.  

No matter what your individual circumstance, I am confident that most of you show up wanting to do the very best that you can with the time you have available. You feel like you have exceeded your goals and far surpassed expectations. Yet you will sit down with your supervisor at some point and the reality is that only so many of you can get that top performance ranking in any given year.  The rules of statistics say that most of you will get an average performance rating every year even though you feel like you deserve much more.

The dilemma you face is that you had what you considered to be an excellent year. Your boss agrees but ranks you as having an average year and then challenges you to “step up your game” to get that top ranking.

I think when most of us get this kind of feedback, it makes us a little defensive, so for now, I want you to proactively be thinking about what it is that you need to change to get that top performance ranking next year. 

Maybe you need to add a skill to your toolbox. Maybe you need to be more assertive with your peers or show a little more empathy with your direct reports. Whatever the case, for most of you the problem isn’t finding what it is you need to change, the question is how to sustain the change you want to make.

The issue of sustaining change is not a new concept. Kurt Lewen observed in the 1940s that making a change was often very short lived. It's like drinking a Monster energy drink. Sure, you are moving faster or have more focus, but so often, once the caffeine is out of your system, the energy level decreases back to its original level. Lewen noted that something more was needed than a shot-in-the-arm type of boost. Sure, changes can be made in the short-run, but how do you translate that change to long-term outcomes?

5 Steps Toward Sustainable Change

1. Create a long-term value proposition. The coaching client has to see relevant longterm value in making any change that has been identified. Focusing on a value proposition will often cause the client to wrestle with their own belief system. Without changing what the person believes to be true, old behavioral habits return insidiously. In my health example, I have to associate overeating or eating the wrong foods as being bad for me ten years from now. It is too easy to succumb to temptation if you are focused on getting your short-term needs met. For my client from last week, who was always interrupting, he had to believe that his behavior was rude and that his intention was not to be seen this way. His need to be respected had to triumph over his need to be heard.

2. Experiment with new behaviors to find a fit. So often I hear coaches talk about practicing new behaviors before they even know if the new behavior will work or not. I like for my clients to experiment with several options to see what will work for them. The fear I have is if this step is skipped then we could end up practicing the wrong behavior and have to go through the process of unlearning and relearning. For me, I had to experiment with reducing the size of my protein choice at dinner, giving up a snack before bed, working out an extra day a week and completely eliminating fried foods. I played with all of these and finally found that what I wanted to practice was reducing my protein size at dinner. I went from eating an entire chicken breast to only eating a portion size equal to the size of my fist.

3. Practice the new behavior in a number of contexts. Then, I practiced this new behavior. When my wife and I grill, we split a chicken breast. When I go out to eat I ask for smaller sizes. When I travel I am conscious not to just go ahead and order the largest meal on the menu because I forgot to have an afternoon snack. To gain sustainability it is important to practice the new behavior across contexts. My client had to practice not interrupting his boss, his peers, his direct reports. He had to practice not interrupting during presentations, and one-on-ones, and on conference calls.

4. Identify relational feedback loops. No change can happen in isolation. We all need constant feedback. We need safe places to see if people notice the changes we are making. This is where it can help to share your development goals across a broad number of relationships. This constant feedback loop is critical to making that new behavior a sticky habit. My client would actually say to his direct reports during one-on-one meetings, "My goal is not to interrupt you and finish your sentences during our meeting today. If I do this would you please just get up and put a tick mark on my whiteboard.” Feedback is a gift, all the way through the development process.

5. Celebrate the noted change. Let the dopamine in your brain flow. You have worked long and hard to gain this change. Likely somewhere between 2 and 3 months at a minimum. Why not have a party? Why not let the good feeling of accomplishment and a job well-done flow through to those who have been with you on your development journey.

I would be really interested in knowing if you have other coaching sustainability tips. Why not leave a comment or share an experience below? I would love to hear from you!

One Way To Lead More Effectively

I think the idea of influence when it comes to leadership has become a really misunderstood idea. In organizations, we give a lot of weight to performance and getting things done.

How things get done, doesn’t really matter as much as that they get done….until the “how” does matter. This can create quite a confusing predicament for some leaders.

Often times I will get an email from an organization who will want me to coach someone who is really smart, really talented, and even seen as an expert in their field. The organization loves “what” the person does. And the “what” the person does is so good that the “how” they go about doing it is, to coin a phrase, pushed under a rug.

Everyone knows in the organization knows that “how” the leader goes about things is less than desirable…”But that’s just(insert whatever name you want here) Scott…You know how he is…We all just learn to work with him or work around him.”

In this post, I want to unpack this idea of influence a bit, but first, it is important you understand the event that gave me some real clarity.

In our family, we have a little dog whose name is Carlos.

We have had Carlos now for about 13 years. So for a dog, he is getting pretty old.

Carlos actually lost his sight a couple of years ago and is basically deaf as well. He is still pretty cute and gets around fairly well for an old guy. There are times when he does get a bit confused and gets a little lost in his own home.

That happened to Carlos the other day. He was sniffing around in our kitchen and as he was in search of any morsel that was dropped on the floor he made his way under the kitchen table.

Once he got under the table, with all the chairs around it he became confined in this maze. Every time he would turn and try and get out from underneath the table he would bump into a chair or table leg. Then he would back up a bit and try a different exit strategy only be foiled in his plan by yet another obstacle.

As I watched all this happen (don’t worry I didn’t let it go too long before I moved a chair and he found his way out), I got to thinking to myself…

If I had the problem Carlos had, what would my self-talk be like?

If I am honest I would be saying things like:

• Who put this stupid table here?

• Why didn’t somebody tell me if I went in here it would be hard to get out?

• How could you people all watch me struggle like this and not help me?

It was so easy for me to see myself blaming the kitchen table for my problems or shifting my issue to other people. The fact that I had this problem could not have anything to do with me at all.

Of course, the problem is totally mine!

My reality is that I am doing everything I can to get out of the table maze, the problem is that I can not see, that in fact, I am the problem!

I got myself into this mess and having the problem and the anxiety that goes along with it, I can not think of what the solution might be.

The anxiety I am feeling is causing me to not be able to think clearly.

Psychologists and people who work in leadership development have a name for this kind of thinking that does not reflect reality. It is called Self-Deception.

Self-Deception causes us to obscure the truth about ourselves which leads to all sorts of issues which ultimately undermines our ability to see and influence others. In the Emotional Intelligence world, we call this Reality Testing.

Leaders need the ability to assess the situation between what is experienced and what objectively exists.

The reality of the situation is if I put myself in Carlos’ shoes, that I am stuck and what objectively exists is that I don’t know how to get out. Self-Deception comes in as I try and shift the blame for how I got into this mess, and that I really need help getting out. Oh, how easy it is to blame; our coworkers, another department, a competitor, or even our poor mothers!

If we are going to lead more effectively we need to solve our Self-Deception crisis and really work on what it means to be a leader of influence.

Influence

I think in leadership circles, influence has really become misunderstood. What I mean is that we often see influence as “I got you to do what I want to be done”; ergo, I influenced you.

Well, the reality is that you think you have influenced me, and perhaps if you pay me enough money, or have enough power over me perhaps in some short-term thinking way you have. At least you have until I can find someone to pay me more money or I can find a way to get out from underneath your position of power.

True influence recognizes a couple of things. First that you as a leader have both performance AND people as part of the fruit that grows in your metaphorical leadership tree. One at the expense of the other is very short-term thinking.

If you are going to really influence others you have to get better at understanding their needs. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, and it doesn’t matter how hard you work. Frankly not too many people other than your mom really care. What they really need from you is to be heard by you. As you listen to the needs they have you are able to find ways to align your performance with what they need. I am not talking bout compromise here. In a compromise, both people lose something. No, I am advocating for how you as a leader can get done what you need to be done, while listening and helping others get what they need.

The only true way to influence others is to become empathic and really listen to what they need.

So how about it? Could you set aside your own needs for a moment, and work to understand what others might be needing.

I argue this is one way to really lead more effectively.

The One Thing To Remember in Giving and Receiving Feedback

I think one of the most difficult things to do in organizational life is to receive tough feedback.

Most of us go into our jobs wanting to be seen at best as a top performer and at the very least a valuable contributor to the organization.

So when someone sits you down to give you some feedback, how you receive this message can make a big difference as to the perception others will have of you.

Organizations spend lots of money on teaching managers and leaders how to give good feedback. Most “giving feedback” models include some type of framework that mandates at least 3 steps: (1) Provide context for the situation, (2) Give an assessment of a behavior, and (3) Declare the results of that behavior. The goal then is to enter into a conversation about what the person could do differently in that situation to get a different outcome. While there are probably some improvements to be made, the model in my estimation is directionally correct. It gets a conversation started, and is an attempt to help someone improve.

At the same time, there are some assumptions that get made inside of any feedback model that need to be addressed.

Case Study: Toni and Mia

Let’s consider a situation where Toni is Mia’s supervisor.  

Mia has been part of Toni’s team for about 8 months so Mia has had adequate time to observe how Toni is integrating her into the team. Mia has noticed that Toni is a bit more relationally distant from her than other members of the team, but she shrugs this off since Mia is still the newest team member.

Mia really loves the company and wishes she could say the same about working for Toni. She cannot pinpoint why she feels this way, but Toni seems to treat her differently from other team members. For example, Toni will often get into detailed conversations with other team members about hobbies or things going on in their personal lives, but everything with Mia seems to be about her projects at work. Flat out, Toni just spends more time with other members of the team. Maybe it is just a quantity of time thing, but the perception to Mia is that Toni just knows them better. One thing that Mia would say about herself is that she loves her work and others have even commented to her they wished they could care as deeply about their projects as Mia does.

The Feedback Process

As part of a routine organizational feedback process, Toni is tasked with gathering some feedback for each member of her team. For Mia, Toni will ask two or three team members what it is like to work with Mia. Simple, straightforward, open-ended, and as unbiased as possible on the part of Toni; just what is it like to work with Mia. Toni will then take her assessment of Mia’s performance and put it with the other feedback.

Once all of the data is collected Toni will develop one or two things that each person on her team could improve upon. The intention of the exercise is so that everyone is providing input and is able to make any behavioral course corrections if needed.

Toni’s Feedback for Mia

Toni’s challenge in preparing for her conversation with Mia became one of only focusing on two things. While she had some idea that Mia was struggling to integrate into the team she did not realize it was so evident to everyone else. Toni was grateful that the organization had a feedback model and even invested in a half-day of training to teach supervisors how to use it. She would need all that skill in her conversation with Mia.

The day came for the two to meet to discuss the feedback. Toni had decided on two talking points:

1. Grandstanding- People on the team thought that Mia was not sensitive to other projects the team had and that hers, by far, was the most important.

2. Constant Comparison-Toni had noticed in almost every conversation that Mia would compare how she was working on projects versus others on the team and this always came with how her way was better

Needless to say, when the two sat down the conversation did not go well. Even though Toni executed the feedback model with flawless accuracy she could tell Mia was both stunned by the feedback and hurt that people on the team actually felt this way. One of her comments to Toni was, “Who comes to work and tries to belittle others by doing these things. What is this 4th grade? Maybe folks around here are just a little too nice to each other and need to grow some thicker skin.” She finished the conversation with Toni by saying that the process needed to have a name change from Team Feedback to Shark Attack.

The one thing to remember in giving and receiving feedback

1. Recognize who is in the Power Seat. Most would assume, because of the power gradient that exists in organizations that the manager, in this case, Toni, is in the power seat. But studies actually show that it is the receiver of the feedback who is in control. The receiver gets to decide what is heard, what is reflected upon, and what ultimately will be acted upon. You may be saying, well yes, but if Mia doesn’t change her behavior she will get fired. And yes, this might be true, Toni is merely a messenger and Mia has the power to decide what her actions will be.

As the receiver of the feedback, realize your power position. Be as open as you can to what is being said. Ask good clarifying questions so you have all the information you need to decide if you are going to make any changes or not.

What do you think Mia and Toni could have done differently to get a better outcome? I’d love to hear your comments.

My Summer Reading List: Part Two

Last week on the blog I reviewed 3 of my favorite books (and one of my more equal favorites) from my summer reading list. If you happened to miss that post, you can click here and take a look to see if there is anything of interest to you.

Today I’m sharing the three titles that round out my favorite 2019 summer reading list:

The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant by Terry Felber

Like the Backpack from last week’s list, this book is a story that provides some really good life lessons.

While The Backpack focused on how we impact others with our emotions, this work focuses on providing perspective on what it means to be successful. More specifically, it addresses two key errors in thinking about personal wealth.

The first is that if you work hard, and as a result build some personal wealth, that this is evil in some way. The second error is that if you do create some wealth that this is somehow an indicator of God’s blessing or favor. The author does a fine job in story form of debunking both of these myths.

The story takes place primarily in Venice and seems to be in a time period just after the crucifixion of Christ. A time where there are great cathedrals and yet a lot is being learned about trade and valuing business relationships.

As you read, there are 12 principles that are unlocked that are both profound and simple at the same time.

Some of what the author calls ‘principles’ are debatable, but that is what I really like about the book. The author says” here is a principle or an idea,” and then seems to give space for there to be continued learning.

For example, Principle 2 is “Financial prosperity is often connected to soul prosperity.” While the author positions this as a principle, the word “often” would indicate it is not a hard and fast rule. There seems to be lots of room for people to discuss things like:

• What does financial prosperity mean?

• What does soul prosperity mean?

• Why is this not a universal truth?

The story is engaging. The principles are discussion-worthy (there is even a small group discussion guide in the back of the book). This book would be a good one to read and then journal what each of the principles means for you in your own life.

I think my favorite quote from this book needs some setup. Throughout the story, there are yearly meetings between the protagonist, Aleso, and his mentor. As Aleso prepares mentally for the final meeting the two will have, he asks himself, “I wonder what this year will bring?” I just love that question. While none of us knows or can predict the future, it is a great open and curious question. One to pause and reflect on.

Question for Reflection: If you ask yourself, “I wonder what this year will bring?” Rather than specifically trying to answer it, reflect just on how the question makes you feel? Where do your thoughts go? What memories are brought up that might be impacting how you even frame this question for yourself?

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Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr

Caution: This book will really make you think. In addition to just getting in your head, it could get you to stop and pause, asking some pretty intense questions of yourself like, “What is my life all about?”

As Rohr (a catholic priest by training) starts the book, he does so in a profound and soul-shattering way.

“There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong “container” or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.”

As I find myself these days, with my container primarily built, I am very interested in the idea of what my container is meant to hold. Rohr basically makes the case that the first half of your life is about building the container by understanding things like your worldview, your personality, your emotional self-awareness. The first half of life is about introducing you to yourself.

It is in the second half of life where the game really gets interesting.

Okay, so I am this person in the first half of life who is a materialist, born to be competitive, who is an extrovert, and who has grown an ability to see inside, really inside, of people. This is my container, albeit a very limited description. Now I find myself asking the question of what this container was meant to hold. Enter Richard Rohr and the idea of Falling Upward.

I even love the title of this book. So often we think about falling down. Rohr takes a scientific law of nature like gravity and says, in the spiritual world that law does not apply. You are learning and growing.

What I love about this learning approach is that it is about the usual cross points in life being a kind of “necessary suffering.”

What is it that I am supposed to be learning from the pain I have experienced in my life and putting this in the context of who I am (what I learned about myself in the first half of my life).

The psychologist Carl Jung said, “So much unnecessary suffering comes to the world because people will not accept the legitimate suffering that comes from being human.”

Rohr takes this idea and asks questions regarding what you can learn from your suffering to help others experience and process their suffering. Does this indeed help you understand your purpose and destiny in life?

Question for Reflection: Do you know enough about the container of who you are to begin to make sense of your suffering to invest in others?

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A Beautiful Question by Frank Wilczek

Spoiler Alert: Wilczek is a Nobel Prize Winner in Physics and this book is 328 pages of dense content.

The subtitle of this work is Finding Nautre’s Deep Design, and the thing I love about the book is the simple question it asks at the very beginning:

Does the world embody beautiful ideas?

If for no other reason, you should pick up a copy of this book and work through this question on your own.

My whole love of this book is that Frank is a physicist and therefore in love with numbers and theories and ideas. And yet he is willing to ask a very penetrating question that plays with the rational part of all of our brains.

What is beauty?

Now, there is a lot of math and physics in the book, but I found myself taking a lot of the stuff I did not understand for granted. I kept finding myself saying, “The guy has a Nobel Prize in Physics, I will trust what he is saying here is true.” I found the logic and the flow of the book to be so very well done. There is great integration of not only science but psychology and spirituality. Besides, I just love the question, what is beautiful?

My favorite quote comes on page 315, “Sometimes the most important step in understanding something is to realize you shouldn’t worry about everything. It’s usually better to be (maybe) right about something than “not wrong” about everything.” And that from a Nobel Prize winner.

Question for Reflection: What assumption in life are you holding on to that could cause you to be wrong about everything?

I hope you enjoy one of these books! If you do, or if you have a recommendation of your own, I’d love to hear it!

My Summer Reading List: Part One

I love books! Not e-readers, not audiobooks. For me, there is something about the feel of a real book in my hand.

The turning of the pages. Always having a “roller ball” pen to underline and mark them up. I just love the feel of the pen going across the paper. Sometimes I write notes in the margin. When something really motivates me, I will even start taking notes on the front pages of the book so that I have an easy reference to the pages that impacted me.

I am a self-admitted “readaholic.”

From time to time, folks ask me what I have been reading. So I thought I would share a few of my favorites from this summer. As I reflected on the over a dozen books I have consumed, these 6 really stood out for me. Since 6 is way too many to do in one blog post, I thought I would break it up into two posts over the next two weeks. I hope you find this interesting and if one of these titles intrigues you. I hope you will get a copy and have some fun with it. I have tried to organize these so there will be a lot of diversity in each of the two posts. I present them in no logical order since I loved them all and they all had some impact on my life.

The Backpack by Tim A. Gardner

I know I said in the paragraph above I loved all the books I read this summer, and that is true. But maybe I am a communist reader because I loved this one just a little more than all the rest.

The backpack is a story that primarily takes place on an airplane. The fact that it is a story with leadership implications really excites me. There are plenty of books out that are prescriptive in the self-help context. In this story, the backpack serves as a metaphor for our emotional self-awareness and emotional expression. The main idea here is that as a leader it is really important to understand and manage our own emotions while learning to love others along the way.

There is a life lesson application on almost every page. As I watched the characters move through the story I found myself saying, “I am glad I don’t do that.” Then I would ask my wife, “Do I ever do that?” She would answer, “I have seen you do that!” The point here is that we all have metaphorical emotional backpacks that we swing and hit other people with from time to time.

This book will make you stop and think about how you as a leader are really impacting others. In my opinion, it is a must-read and should be placed in every masters and doctoral program on leadership! If you liked the book “The Servant” by James C Hunter then you will LOVE the Backpack.

One of my favorite quotes from the book is when the main character, Jon, has a revelation and realized he is responsible for everything in his backpack and everything that comes out of it as well. His mentor in the book, Buddy, tells him, “The next big step, the step that takes all of the practice we were discussing, is realizing that our emotions need not be the excuse for bad behavior. We can, for the most part, decide what actually does come out of our backpack.”

Powerful idea, Tim! Really powerful!

Question for Reflection: Are you aware of what is coming out of your emotional backpack at all times?

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The Fearless Organization by Amy C Edmonson

If you are a leader, and if you are processing the above quote about controlling what comes out of your backpack, then this book by Amy Edmonson is for you. In a very clear and easy to read way, Amy walks you through all the research on why leaders who create psychological safety have better outcomes than those who do not.

The point is clear: hiring talented people is not enough! Especially if they show up and do not feel safe enough to display their talent.

Sometimes well-meaning folks cannot contribute because they do not recognize the need for their input. More often, according to Edmonson, it is because they are reluctant to stand out, be wrong, or offend the boss.

One of my favorite things about this book is that it totally gives leaders permission to look at their failures, not as absolutes but as learning. This book is really about unleashing to potential in followers by creating an environment where they feel safe. The more the culture helps people feel safe the better the work outcome will be. Period!

One of the most powerful moments in the book happened for me early on; “…in psychologically safe workplace, people are not hindered by interpersonal fear. They fell willing and able to take the inherent interpersonal risks of candor. They fear holding back their full participation more than they fear sharing a potentially sensitive, threatening, or wrong idea. The fearless organization is one in which interpersonal fear is minimized so that team and organizational performance can be maximized in a knowledge sensitive world. It is not one devoid of anxiety about the future!”

Question for Reflection: How are you doing at creating an organization where people feel safe?

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Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

This one is perhaps a bit personal, but I just had to include it on the list. As I write this, my siblings and I are working with my Mom in making decisions about how she wants to spend the years she has left (she is 83 years young). We are also impacted by the fact that she remarried about 8 years ago and her husband is now in a nursing home. I will spare you all the intimate details of the family dynamic, just to say I needed to learn more about what matters to people at the end of life.

Gwande is a physician and so kind and empathic as he lays out, from both his scientific and personal experiences, what people go through at the end of their lives. The book is so easy to digest as the main points are all made in a very readable, story form. He covers topics from what it means to be independent and how important that is to us all; to what assistance can look like and all the different forms it can take. There are really sensitive chapters on making hard choices and letting go.

Perhaps one of the most impactful quotes to me from the book is: “…as people’s capacities wane, whether through age or ill health, making their lives better often requires curbing our purely medical imperatives-resisting the urge to fill and fix and control.”

Powerful words for me as I balance helping my mom make decisions that are best for her without trying to control everything. I am trying to do a better job of listening and just being, rather than always being so processed focused on what task needs to be done next.

Question for reflection: How are you doing at listening without trying to control?

I hope you enjoyed these brief recommendations! Stay tuned for part two next week.

Will Removing These Leadership Lids Help You?

Not too long ago it was Taco Tuesday at the Livingston home. My wife, Kim, and I were assembling all the ingredients for our tacos: tortillas, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, sour cream, etc. I noticed my wife was struggling to take the lid off of the salsa jar, so I gently gestured for her to give me the jar and proudly assumed the position in heroically twisting the lid off the jar.

It wouldn't budge.

I put forth a little more effort, twisting harder this time. Nothing. I resorted to running it under hot water for a while, then took a towel to dry it before I tried again. Sure enough, the lid finally gave way and the jar was open for salsa to be enjoyed.

Earlier that day, I was talking with a good friend about leadership LIDS. During our conversation, the idea of the lid intrigued me. Yes, the lid is there as a cover, or protection, for what's inside, but it is also a cover, or barrier, keeping you away from what needs to be shared or utilized. Many times it's our own emotions and mentality that hold us back.

I want to focus on four of these potential barriers and consider how we can remove them: Loneliness, Indecisiveness, Defensiveness, and Selfishness.

As you read, think about your own leadership and which LIDS you need to remove. Which of these LIDS is holding you back from sharing what you have to offer?

Loneliness

This could be something you are experiencing in the workplace, or in your personal life. It can creep up when you've physically spent too much time on your own or you feel as if no one can relate to what you are going through or processing. Feeling alone is difficult, and doing alone is even more challenging. As humans, we are designed for relationships. Although alone time can be rejuvenating, we aren't meant to remain there in order to progress or thrive.

Remove this lid: Invite people into your world. Whether it's including them on a project you are working on or asking someone to coffee. If the loneliness doesn't subside and you are having trouble processing or expressing your thoughts, consider talking to a mentor, counselor, or coach.

Indecisiveness

You may say that being indecisive comes from the inability to make a decision because there's seems to be no wrong or right way to go. While that's true, I also see a lot of fear behind decision making. What if I make is the wrong choice? Making a decision is going to keep you moving while indecisiveness keeps you stagnant. How can you lead people if you aren't really going anywhere yourself?

Remove this Lid: Make a decision. Don't let the fear of failure keep you from moving forward. Making a mistake or taking a wrong turn doesn't mean you failed, instead, it's an opportunity to learn and grow.

Defensiveness

In the great American sport of football, the defensive line has a responsibility to keep the other team's offense and quarterback from advancing the field with the ball. They push. They fight. This creates struggle and tension, not to mention it is exhausting as they keep it up until the other team scores or it is their turn to play offense. I bring up this example because we tend to think of defense as protecting, yet the defensive line isn't protecting anything. They are pushing back and preventing advancement. We can often be defensive in our own lives, having the mindset that we are protecting something. This could be our job, our reputation, or more often than not, our pride. In this case, protection is a fallacy and our defensiveness creates a barrier and tension that prevents the advancement of our goals or our team.

Remove this lid: It takes some intentional awareness of your emotions to see when you may be acting defensively. Your heart might start beating faster, your body temperature may rise, you may feel your lips tighten, or you may unconsciously cross your arms. Try to identify what happens when you start to feel defensive, why you are feeling it, and what you might think you're "protecting." How is your defensiveness holding you and/or your team back?

Selfishness

Putting your needs and desires before others is the easiest way to explain selfishness. It is even easier, unfortunately, to get caught up in selfishness if we don't stop to think about what we are doing or behaving. Consider what your priorities are right now. Are you focusing on your own advancements and needs? What about those of your team and followers? Don't get me wrong, self-care is important, as long as it's not at the expense of another person.

Remove this lid: Think about your goals, priorities, and needs. What would it look like if you included your team in those goals, changing "I" statements to "we." Call on your team and followers to find our what their goals and priorities are, then think about how you can help them achieve their goals. Practice humility by stepping back, letting them take lead on a project, and praising them publicly for a job well done. Trust me, their success will be your success.

Homework

Think about our LIDS analogy above and identify one of them that you need to remove. What action steps or conversations do you need to have in order to remove them? What benefits will come to you and your followers when you remove the lid?